[OT] Which IDE / Editor do you use?

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Sun, 22 Sep 2013 01:07:08 +1000
Manu <turkeyman at gmail.com> wrote:

>[...lots of stuff snipped...]

Believe it or not, my opinions on Linux, Windows and everyday usability
are actually very, very similar to yours (including the vague
impression that Linux GUIs are just facades - which they actually sort
of are just by design, but I digress).

In fact, all that stuff is why I'm still on Windows for my main system.
Luckily, things like driver issues and major failures haven't been an
issue for me on Linux for quite some time. But it's other
everyday-productivity things like finding a filemanager and taskbar
that aren't too rough-around-the-edges (because I rely on them *sooo*
heavily), Tortoise-like VCS integration (I don't understand how
people can use Git's command line for anything non-trivial), non-manual
HDD SMART monitoring like HD Sentinel, etc. Finding suitable
replacements for all these things I use every day takes some work, and
I'm still not entirely finished.

And even when I do find what seems to be the best, it isn't always as
good as Windows: For example, there is *no* taskbar on Linux I've found
that's as well-designed as the one Windows has already had for nearly
20 years. There are a bunch of OSX-dock-alikes that, I assume, might do
a good job of emulating the OSX experience (I haven't tried since I
never liked the dock). But over a decade since I first tried them, the
taskbars in KDE, XFCE, etc still don't quite match the quality of
design that MS already had in Windows 95.

That said, I do find that Xfce 4.10 is good enough to be acceptable for
me, but it still isn't up to Windows standards.

The odd thing is, I've been finding that each new version of post-XP
Windows has required more and more effort to undo all of their...what I
find to be productivity-hindering UI "enhancements". So Windows is
requiring more and more effort (for me), and simultaneously I've been
getting more and more proficient with the ever-improving Linux (due to
my server work and doing cross-platform testing), and I don't see any
signs of MS or Linux altering their current trajectories. So the
writing's on the wall, as it were, and for me Linux is becoming a
better bet for everyday productivity. (But this is all just "FWIW" side
comments, not an argument of Linux being "better".)

I think it was mainly your reaction to H. S. Teoh's story that irked
me. It's kinda like watching a mechanic rebuild the engine of some
"known to be gearhead-friendly" car just because he'd been trying to
squeeze out some extra horsepower and erroneously saying "Wow, that
must be a bad brand of car if you have to muck with the engine just to
drive it."

Also, I disagree with your implication that a command line actually
needs to be more user-friendly in more ways than just less cryptic
names. Obviously I wouldn't have a problem if the commandline actually
was more usable to everyone (naturally that'd be a good thing), but I
don't think that's a significant issue, being that it *is* the command
line after all, and non-experts would mostly just stick to GUIs anyway.

> I'm also not 'average-joe-numskull', at least I don't like to think I
> am,

As far as I'm concerned, a programmer is by definition *not* an
average-joe-numskull. If you can write one line of code, run it, and
properly understand it, you're already waaay more advanced than 90% of
computer users.

>The only way I can reason that people can be happy being so
>unproductive, is that they don't actually know what it's like to be
>really productive in the first place. (see: my comment prior about the
>mouse scroll-wheel)

I must have missed that mouse scroll-wheel comment and I can't seem to
find it. What was it again?

FWIW, And I find this somewhat ironic: I find the mouse scroll-wheel to
be FAR more usable on Linux than Windows. On linux you just point to
what you want to scroll and...scroll it. On windows you have to go out
of your way to give the desired control focus (clicking on some
innocuous part of it, tabbing to it, whatever) and only *then* will the
scrollwheel actually do its job. Then you want to scroll something
else? Repeat the process. Imagine if you had to do that to right-click!
I actually find that scrolling issue to really get in my way quite
frequently when trying to do work on Windows. :(  I was able to fix
that on XP, but not on 7.


>If I had visual studio and PIX, I would take a screen capture, clicked
>on the bad pixel, it would immediately present a stack of every
>rendering event contributing to that pixel, and the entire state of
>the rendering hardware at every step of the way, and I'd find the
>problem in a couple of minutes.

Whoa, now that's pretty damn cool. I'd never heard of PIX before.

>I have a strong suspicion that linux works better if you use it daily.
>I'm starting to realise a pattern emerging that things tend to fuck up
>after I perform a bulk round of updates.

I've learned through pain, even in Windows land (heck, so much software
is cross platform these days anyway), that software updates are
opportunities for things to go wrong (or to force ill-conceived UI
changes that hurt my productivity, but that's another matter).

Regardless of OS, I've ended up in the habit of avoiding software
updates unless I have a real reason to (which is a shame, because I
*like* security updates). *Especially* on the server: Sysadmins have a
reputation for not updating as much as the programmers would like, but
I totally understand it because I run my server the same way: If it's
already working, then updating...say...PHP, can only end up breaking
five hundred things, and then guess who has to drop everything and fix
it? ;)

> I can very happily say, I have NEVER compiled a windows kernel.

I can say the same about Linux kernels. I'm afraid to, and don't ever
want to have to, and I've really never needed to. I hear it's easy and,
honestly, I'm sure it is. But, ehh, at best it could only be a bore.

>I've tried to use debian, precisely for this alleged stability.
>My experience was a whole bunch of software that was simply out of
>date.

Yea, that *is* the tradeoff they're famous for making. It'd be great if
they didn't have to but, meh.

That's actually the reason I've just switched to Mint for desktop
Linux. Being based on Ubuntu, it lacks Debian's "out-of-date from day
one", but it also lacks Ubuntu's FOSS religiousness and their seeming
ambivalence towards anything but Unity (An OSX-clone, in my
observation - which is great if you like OSX, but, eh).

On the server I'm still Debian though, because stability is everything
there. Heck my server is still back on Debian 6 just because I haven't
wanted to deal with the risk of breakage updating to Deb 7 (which I
*do* really need to bite the bullet and just get done, I know that).

>> And if you bring up some broken Linux distro, I'll bring up WinME,
>> and then we'll all have added a whole lot of usefulness to the
>> discussion ;) 
>
>I don't think that's a fair comparison at all, that's like saying
>there was one broken version of ubuntu 10 years ago, but it's all
>better now...

IMO, Linux in general was pretty bad 10 years ago. I gave it a genuine
try and ran away screaming...